Among the incidents of the life of Camillus, a story is told of an event that happened, when, after having subdued the Veientines, he drove the Faliscans out their city of Falerii. There existed within the walls a fashionable boys' school, to which the patricians sent their sons, who were frequently taken out walking in the suburbs. One morning the pupils, who were two and two, found themselves growing very tired one by one, for their promenade had been prolonged unusually by the pedagogue. The wretch and his ushers had, in fact, ushered the unsuspecting infants into the camp of Camillus, with an intimation that the parents of the boys were immensely opulent, that the schooling was regularly paid, and there could be no doubt that a rich ransom could be procured for such a choice assemblage of fathers' prides and mothers' darlings. Camillus nobly answered, that he did not make war on young ideas not yet taught to shoot, and he concluded by giving the schoolmaster a lesson; for, causing him to be stripped, and putting a scourge into the hands of the boys, the young whipper-snappers snapped many a whip on the back of their master. [Illustration: School-boys flogging the Schoolmaster.] FOOTNOTES: [18] It has been often a subject of regret that the particulars of this expedition have not been handed down to us, and that the three Roman excursionists did not put their heads together to form a log during their voyage. It is, however, seldom that the marine expeditions of the sages are fully detailed, for nothing can be scantier than the account of the journey of the three wise men of Gotham who went to sea in a bowl; and there is reason to believe that many a chapter has been lost to the philosophical transactions of the world, by the chapter of nautical accidents. [19] "Law of the Twelve Tables," B.C. 450. "Lex Canuleia," B.C. 445. [20] It seems, however, to have been the custom of the period for plebeians to send their daughters from six to sixteen to a scholastic establishment from about nine to five; and it is ten to one that Virginia was a pupil at one of these cheap nursery grounds, in which young ideas were planted out for the purpose of shooting. [21] "Then up sprung Appius Claudius, 'Stop him--alive or dead, Ten thousand pounds of copper to the man who brings his head.'"-- _Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome._ [22] This description is not exaggerated, at least, if the authority of Macaulay is to be relied upon; and for the incidents of this remote period we are perhaps justified in trusting quite as much to the lay of the poet, as to any other source. The following lines refer to the state of Appius, when taken home, after the death of Virginia:--